


Myrrh

by apparitionism



Series: Magi [3]
Category: Warehouse 13
Genre: Bering & Wells Holiday Gift Exchange, F/F
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2018-12-14
Updated: 2018-12-14
Packaged: 2019-09-18 06:56:52
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 4,178
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/16990185
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/apparitionism/pseuds/apparitionism
Summary: For this final gift (of the Magi), to followGoldandFrankincense, I offer you Myrrh. This takes place during the Christmastime after that season that doesn’t exist. It proposes what might be a theory regarding why some things seemed to go so wrong, during that dark and preposterous time, then fixes those things. Tries to, anyway.





	Myrrh

**Author's Note:**

> “Myrrh,” as a word, is etymologically related to the Arabic word for “bitter”; as a substance, it’s the resin of a particular tree—and I’ll note that you extract resin from a tree by wounding that tree. Myrrh can serve as an anointing oil, e.g., in the sacrament of extreme unction, aka the anointing of the sick. Melchior, by tradition the oldest of the Magi, (may have) brought myrrh as his gift. One interpretation of the gifts is that they were intended to be medicinal: gifts of healing brought to the Christ as he himself would bring the gift of healing to the world. Myrrh was also used as an embalming oil, and thus under one version of the story, the myrrh given by Melchior was years later used to embalm Christ after the crucifixion. Anyway, all of this is to say that myrrh is tied up with bitterness and suffering, but also with healing and elevating the soul.

“I’ve got a vibe,” Pete announces, and Myka is gratified when Claudia’s “oh no,” and Steve’s too, echo her own. They are all four in the Warehouse office, with nothing in particular to do and no one in particular to tell them to do it.

“It’s almost Christmas and you’ve got a vibe,” Myka says. “Great.”

“We don’t have a ping,” Claudia points out. “He might as well have a vibe.”

“Just so he doesn’t touch anything this year,” Steve says. “That’s all I care about.”

“Do you want to hear about my vibe or not?”

Myka says, “I have my own vibe about this: saying ‘not’ will make no difference. At all.”

“See, you’re right,” Pete assures her. “And I know how much you love being right. Think of that as a little Christmas present from me to you.”

“I think the real present would be if you stopped having your vibe.”

Claudia offers, “Maybe it’s not a vibe; maybe it’s just that guacamole from last night. Nobody cleans out the fridge anymore, so who knows how long that stuff’s been in there.”

They all jump when they hear a disturbance from the umbilicus. “Artie’s not here,” Claudia says. “Abigail’s not here. If Mrs. F wanted to show up, she’d just blink in, no messing with some silly hallway, and I’m pretty sure I finally got the lock set so the raccoons couldn’t decode it. So… um… who’s…”

Helena walks into the office. Myka has not seen her in months… no one from the Warehouse has seen her in months. She and Myka have texted, have shared the occasional phone call, and while everything is generally pleasant between them, Myka always has a sense that something is not quite _right_ about their exchanges. She doesn’t know what the slight wrongness she feels is about, though, so she chalks it up to the fact that they haven’t seen each other much, not in person, not since Wisconsin and even before that. Something had been different between them, she thinks, before Helena had left for Wisconsin and all the other places she’s been, but Myka can’t remember what it was. That’s odd for her, of course, to probe where it seems like a memory should be and find nothing.

Nothing of note, anyway. And anyway, Helena has been moving around a lot. She’s free of the Warehouse now, so she’s been moving around. It’s hard to keep up with a friend who moves around so much. So it’s nice to see her. 

“I think this might be related,” Pete remarks.

“To your vibe?” Claudia says. “Yeah, I think so too. Uh… H.G., what are you doing here?”

“I’m… not entirely certain,” Helena says, and she does look confused.

“Well, neither are we,” Claudia tells her.

“Hi, Helena,” Myka says.

“Hello, Myka,” Helena says.

“How are you?”

“I’m well.”

“And how’s Giselle?”

“I don’t know. We aren’t… together. Anymore.”

“Oh. I’m sorry to hear that.”

“It was unfortunate.”

Claudia says, in a tone that Myka doesn’t understand, “Are they for real? Worst liars _ever_.”

“No, they _are_ for real,” Steve tells her. “They’re not lying.”

Pete snorts. “Are _you_ for real?”

“As far as I know,” Steve says.

Claudia’s still got that tone as she says, “It’s not just me though, right? Something’s artifacty, whatever’s up with those two. Come on.”

Steve says, “I can tell you believe what you’re saying, but I have no idea why you’re saying it.”

“They used to be _best pals_ ,” Pete says, and now he’s the one with a tone.

Claudia shrugs. “If that’s what you want to call it.”

“What else would he call it?” Steve asks.

“Wait for it…” Claudia raises her arms, like she’s signaling the orchestra to crescendo… but Myka has no idea what any of them are supposed to be waiting for. Or what they’re talking about.

“Oh. _Oh_ ,” Steve says, and Myka allows that it’s strange to see real surprise on his face. “Claud, why didn’t you tell me about this?” he demands. “I mean, I don’t know H.G. very well at all, but why wouldn’t you give me a heads up on this kind of thing?”

“Because it’s above my pay grade.”

“You’re gonna be Caretaker,” Pete says. “Doesn’t that mean _nothing’s_ above your pay grade?”

“Yes? No? I don’t think I have a pay grade. Mrs. F probably lives on artifact energy and agents’ despair. Maybe the occasional Pringle on a snacky day.”

Myka is listening to this exchange with only half an ear; mostly she’s trying to think of what to say to Helena. Now that the pleasantries are out of the way… she and Helena were close, she feels. They used to be close, closer than this, she vaguely finds, back somewhere in the past, but some piece of her _response_ to that is missing.

When Helena ignores the group and heads for the Warehouse proper, however, Myka follows her.

“I’m sorry,” Helena says over her shoulder, “but I feel that there’s something I really must… find my way to.”

Myka realizes that everyone else is following them too when she hears Claudia remark, “This is very Christmas-y.”

“Is it?” Steve asks.

“Because it’s like a star’s leading her—leading _us_ —to a place.”

“There’s _five_ of us,” Pete observes.

“Maybe if you put all our wisdom together, you get three magi’s worth?” Claudia says.

“Not even one, I bet,” Steve tells her.

Helena stops. She tilts her head, then she turns decisively down an aisle. Myka follows, wishing she could figure out why she feels she _has_ to, wishing she could figure out what the _problem_ is, why she doesn’t feel entirely _right_ asking Helena about her life elsewhere, hearing about the things she might be doing. And who she might be doing them with. “Are you really okay?” she asks.

“I am,” Helena says. “Generally so. Yourself?”

“The same. Warehouse-y, you know.”

“I do know,” Helena assures her.

“They do seem like pals,” Steve says.

“Right,” Claudia says. “And yeah, they are. And they were. Except for the part where also the other thing.”

“So did they ever—”

“No idea. Also above my pay grade. But if I had to _bet_? Not that I have any money, because again, no pay grade—but if I had to bet, they _wish_ they did, anyhow.”

“Wish who did what?” Myka asks. This is beyond confusing—Helena showing up, these cryptic conversations, this trek through the Warehouse to wherever Helena thinks she has to be.

Claudia says, “Wish somebody could say if we were getting close to whatever vibe thing.”

“Seriously, where are you going?” Myka asks Helena.

“I don’t know.”

“For somebody who doesn’t know where she’s going,” Claudia says, “you seem pretty bent on getting there.”

“All I can tell you, Claudia, is that I feel strangely compelled. Called, if you will. Which isn’t unlike…” She turns her head back and forth, slowly, as if with care she might be able to catch sight of something just at the corners of her vision.

“Isn’t unlike what?” Pete asks.

“I hadn’t thought about this in quite some time, but… it isn’t unlike how I felt just after we vanquished Mr. Sykes. In fact I…”

“Quit trailing off!” Claudia orders. “In fact you what?”

“May have traveled this very route? I know it’s months and months ago, but this seems very familiar.”

“Okay. What happened when you traveled _this very route_ before?” Claudia asks.

Helena stops still. She points.

Pete observes, “That’s not really a star so much as it’s a rocking chair.”

Helena says, “I sat in that chair.”

“Why do people _do things_ like that in this place?” Steve says, mostly under his breath. Myka figures it’s rhetorical, though she’s tempted to answer him with something like “Because none of us—mostly Pete, but really none of us—seems to be very good at keeping in mind that actions have consequences.”

Helena says, “I believe that then, just as now, I felt called to it.”

“What does it do?” Myka asks. “I don’t really want to know, but what does it do?”

Pete says, “Just a guess, but I bet it rocks.”

Myka hits him, both for the comment and because it’s a relief to do something normal. That action, at least, isn’t likely to have much of a consequence.

Claudia, meanwhile, is making herself useful by reading about the chair. “William Sydney Porter had set aside money for him and his wife to attend the Chicago World’s Fair, but his wife didn’t realize that’s what it was for and used the money to buy things for the family to use together. She bought this rocking chair. And this act of selflessness was what inspired him to write… oh. Oh. I kind of get it now. Wait, except, what did H.G. give up when she sat in it? And who else… oh man.”

“Inspired this guy to write what?” Pete asks.

Claudia says, “I bet you’ll guess when I tell you what his pseudonym was.”

“William Sydney Porter’s pen name was O. Henry,” Myka says, because she can’t help herself. “But what does—”

“Way to steal my thunder,” Claudia says. “But yeah. The rocking chair inspired ‘The Gift of the Magi.’”

“But what does it _do_?” Steve asks.

Claudia sighs. “I bet you can sing it with me: the person who sits in the chair sacrifices their greatest treasure. In order to give a gift of great value to the person who matters most. The catch is, the other person does the same thing, sacrifices _their_ greatest treasure in order to give something.”

“What other person?” Pete asks.

“The person they love. Who I’m pretty sure has to love them too. The thing doesn’t say, but I think we all know who H.G. was thinking about when she sat in this chair.”

Helena says “Do we?” at the same time Myka says, “We do?”

Steve says, “Oh. _Oh_. And I think, based on what they just said, we know what they gave up.”

Helena says “Do we?” at the same time Myka says, “We do?”

“It’s just like in the story,” Pete says. “Right?”

And Myka has no idea what they could possibly be talking about. “What’s just like in the story? Helena still has her hair.”

“What on earth…” Helena says. “Of course I have my hair.” She touches her head, as if to make absolutely sure, but of course she does have her hair. It’s very pretty, Helena’s hair... and Myka, in noting that fact rather distractedly, feels again a sense of some deficiency in her reaction to it. An absence.

“Right, and,”—Pete points at Myka—“so do you. Have your hair. Which means, great as both your heads of hair are, those weren’t the things. And neither of you has got a watch, either.”

Helena looks at her wrist, then back up at Pete. “I do have a watch.”

“I do too,” Myka says. “Just because I didn’t wear it today, that doesn’t mean that I—”

“This is _ridiculous_ ,” Claudia proclaims.

Pete claps his hands to his head. “Seriously, H.G., you couldn’t’ve just… I dunno, sold your locket? And bought Myka a first edition of some geeky book?” To Myka, he says, “And _you_. You couldn’t’ve sold, like, your reading glasses, and bought her… and bought her… I don’t know what lockets need. New hinges?  But oh no, it’s gotta be _love_. Which, by the way, _Myka_ , I’m still ticked off that we aren’t really in.”

“No you aren’t.” Myka tells him, because he isn’t. He just likes to give her a hard time about it.

Helena says, “Wait, what?”

“It’s a long story,” Pete starts, “about how we—”

Myka says, “It’s not. And even if it is, it shouldn’t be. There was an artifact, but we didn’t know that. Thought we were… you know. End of story.”

“End of story?” Helena echoes.

Myka nods. “Yeah. Literally.”

“Literally?”

Pete groans. “Quit repeating what she says! ‘I knew that you’d think that I thought some thinking that you thought too.’ Claud, goo the stupid chair so we can find out how it ends and then go eat Christmas cookies.”

“Your wish…” Claudia says with a bow. She pulls her latest, smallest goo gun out of her pocket.

Helena perks up at that. “What an adorable implement. Is that your own design?”

Claudia pauses, holding out the gun, admiring her handiwork. “Yep. Sweet little guy. I’ll tell you all about it later, H.G., right after we get you and Myka back to what I’m really hoping is your normal selves.”

For half a second, Helena looks to Myka like she’s trying to say something, like she might object to the idea that she isn’t normal. Then the purple hits the rocking chair, and the sparks are impressively bright, fourth-of-July bright, world-changingly bright.

When they clear, Myka is looking at Helena, and Helena is looking at Myka.

It’s the kind of unwhammying that should have its own set of visual effects: a current of _something_ surges, then crests, and as it does, Myka feels it all; she feels _everything_ , and the power of it pushes her to her knees. Breathing it in, out, now that it’s part of her again. Helena is in front of her on _her_ knees, and everything in her eyes is making Myka’s heart falter then run too fast, tripping then scrambling, over and over again. As it always used to do. “I love you,” Myka says, and the force, the wonder of having it _back_ , is endless.

“ _I_ love _you_ ,” Helena says.

Pete sighs. “Okay. _That_ time it was okay.”

Helena is looking among all of them; her eyes are dazed, glazed. She finally settles them on Myka. “Myka—but why—but what _happened_?”

And Myka can barely get the words out, now that she sees it all in the light of what she now remembers she should have been feeling the entire time: “You went away and didn’t come back, and then we found you in Wisconsin and I told you to stay there and—”

Helena waves her hands. “No, I haven’t _forgotten_ what happened. But I don’t understand _why_ it happened. Why I did that: why I _ever_ would have done that. And then why _you_ did that… I don’t want to be presumptuous, but why _you_ ever—”

Pete says, “Okay, let’s start again. How about this: there was a TV movie in the seventies. Marie Osmond was in it. She had long hair, and...”

“Don’t listen to him,” Myka says. “There was a short story, like I said, and it’s from 1905, so you missed it. A husband sells his pocket watch to buy his wife combs for her hair for Christmas, and she sells her hair to buy him a chain for his watch. It’s about irony.”

Steve says, “It’s not about irony. I think if we learned anything today, it was this: that story might _use_ irony, but that isn’t what it’s _about_.”

****

It takes some time to get everything, and everyone, calmed down. Sorted out. Conveyed home. Myka can’t stop _looking_ at Helena, as if that’s somehow going to be sufficient to fill this emotional capacity that’s been blasted into reopening… is this how coma patients feel when they finally wake up and realize how much they’ve missed? But she has to acknowledge that she doesn’t have the only claim on Helena; Claudia hasn’t seen her in even longer than it’s been for Myka, and they’re barely into the house before she’s dismantling the tiny goo gun and bragging about how she miniaturized this and worked around that and Helena is smiling and happy and Myka is really disinclined to get in the way of Helena—Helena, whom Myka loves—smiling and being happy about anything at all.

But later that night, Helena disappears, and Myka doesn’t know what to do. Well, no, she does know what to do: find Helena. Claudia confides, “She said she had to go to the Warehouse. She said not to tell you.” And Myka panics, because she has to keep what happened with the rocking chair from happening again. So she goes to the Warehouse herself, ready to _fight_ whatever artifact thinks it has a right _this time_ to prey on Helena’s outsize instinct for martyring herself—whatever artifact thinks it has a right to steal their potential happiness, Helena’s _and_ hers, no matter what ends up happening, no matter if their happiness is troubled and troubling. It’s _theirs_.

She’s ready to fight, ready to throw herself in the way… but she finds Helena standing in the expanse of empty land in front of the massive structure, looking up at the sky.

“You haven’t been whammied, have you?” Myka asks.

Helena shakes her head. “Have you?”

“Me? I’m fine.”

“You don’t believe you’re Father Christmas?”

“What?”

“Your hat.”

Myka touches her head: she hasn’t taken off the Santa hat that Pete and, surprisingly, Steve had ambushed her with right as she was leaving to come here. “It’s gonna be okay,” Pete had said, and Steve had added, “Because it’s not _about_ irony.” Now Myka tells Helena, “I forgot about it.” Helena nods, then turns her head upward again to gaze at the night sky. “What are you doing out here?” Myka asks. “Well, no, I can see what you’re doing: standing here, looking up at the sky. Better question: what are you thinking out here?”

“Is it a better question? Or just a more revealing one?”

Myka doesn’t say anything.

Helena cants her head to one side. “I was thinking about stars. Navigation. For the first while it seemed profound; now it just seems cold.”

“It’s December in South Dakota.”

“I can think of few things less profound than that.”

“Pete,” Myka says immediately.

“What about him?”

“He’s less profound. Than December in South Dakota.”

“Call it a tie,” Helena says. She crosses her arms. Her coat… it’s the dark-brown trench she used to wear, and now Myka wonders if she had left it here, if it had been waiting, all this time, for her return. The rocking chair had supposedly been the beacon that called Helena back, because it was Christmas, because it was time, something about gifts and lessons learned and Myka hasn’t yet sorted it out. But this coat—in no way warm enough for December in South Dakota—maybe it was some sort of navigational signal too. An emergency flare? Myka remembers the feel of this coat under her hands. This coat, and the body within it, under her hands, pulling her higher and higher, up into the sky. Myka looks up now too. She looks up at the sky, the sky up into which no one is pulling her, and she waits.

“I’m an idiot,” Helena eventually says.

“True.”

“I was expecting _some_ objection.”

“No, you’re definitely an idiot. Then again, so am I.”

“I’m so glad I need not object out of any sort of reciprocal courtesy.”

“Seriously.”

“I didn’t mean it comically. Pete was right.”

“Do you mean _that_ comically?”

“I read the story in question, not an hour ago. Claudia found it online for me. If only I _had_ sold the locket and bought you a book.”

“Do you remember how it ends? The story, I mean?”

“Not so well as you do, I suspect.”

Myka quotes, “‘And here I have lamely related to you the uneventful chronicle of two foolish children in a flat who most unwisely sacrificed for each other the greatest treasures of their house. But in a last word to the wise of these days let it be said that of all who give gifts these two were the wisest. Of all who give and receive gifts, such as they are wisest. Everywhere they are wisest. They are the magi.’” Myka concentrates on watching her breath as she struggles against thickness in her throat, warmth at her eyes and nose. The last time she cried outdoors in winter, here, icicles formed on her eyelashes.

After a long time, Helena speaks. “I don’t feel notably wise.”

“That’s because you’re an idiot.”

“As we’ve established. But you’re right. It was the greatest treasure of my house, and I sacrificed it. And for what? To give you your freedom? To ensure your safety? Shouldn’t an artifact speak with greater clarity?”

“That’s not really what they’re known for, is it.”

“Not really.” Helena blows out a breath, her frustration a stream of vapor that curls away into the cold. “A chair calls to me, and thus I wander in the wilderness for months. Not wise at all.”

“I don’t know. Maybe it was important to find out what the greatest treasures of both our houses were. Who we’d sacrifice them for…”

“I knew that already,” Helena snaps. “Of myself at least. Surely you must know that I knew that already.”

“Maybe you needed to know that I’d do the same thing. And that I knew it of myself already too.” Myka shrugs. “It’s a theory, anyway.”

“I suppose that’s the best we can hope for, given the lack of clarity. But I’d still like to know for certain.”

“I don’t think it matters.”

“Don’t you?”

“What matters is that you believe it, and that I believe it.” Myka raises a gloved hand toward the Warehouse. “All these things people believe, in all the ways they believe them. Everything in that big building blocking half the stars in the sky: all those things that people believed in. Believed in so hard. What matters is that they believed it.”

“ _That’s_ profound.”

“Maybe. Maybe not.” Myka lets her hand fall. “It _is_ awfully cold, though.” She watches her breath again. “It’s Christmas.”

“Eve,” Helena corrects. Though she sneaks a glance at her watch as she says it.

Myka smiles. “Don’t be difficult. It’s Christmas.”

“All right.”

“And I want to kiss you.”

“I wish you would.”

“But I’m afraid—I’m so afraid.”

“Of me and what I’ll do.”

_That_ tone. That tone, and that belief: like Helena believes she could, and worse, _should_ , wrap herself in that inadequate coat and vanish in a puff of evil smoke. Myka says, “No, you idiot. I’m afraid that once I start, I won’t be able to stop.”

“Then I wish you wouldn’t. Stop, that is.”

They move close and closer; Myka breathes, “It’s so cold.”

“I don’t feel cold. Not at all cold.”

Myka can’t quite get there, through the cold, not quite yet; she says, “You know, I didn’t think I’d be wearing a Santa hat. To kiss you for the first time.”

“Would you prefer nothing at all? Because although I am trying not to imagine how we might—”

But now Myka can’t wait another second: this woman, that mouth, “nothing at all,” and what is Myka supposed to do with that, right after “afraid of me and what I’ll do”? What she does with that is _stop_ it. The kiss is freezing cold, scorching hot, neither, both. Two mouths—that’s all. Two human mouths, finding each other. And all Myka feels, with that hot and cold mouth against hers, is love.

“And so it was a hat,” Helena observes.

Myka kisses her again. Still so much love, and now Helena, smiling, says, “For our first _and_ second kisses.”

“Third, too,” Myka tells her, and if she could always kiss Helena like this, quickly, just because she _wants to_ …

Helena breathes into Myka’s mouth, “I do intend to lose count.” She kisses Myka against her cheek, soft, breathing, warm, condensing, damp.

It makes Myka smile, this moisture that she reaches up to wipe away, lest it freeze. “I don’t wear reading glasses.”

“What?”

“My glasses. They’re for distance. My contacts too. I’m nearsighted; I don’t need glasses for reading. So really, the whole irony twist thing with the locket and a book and what was it Pete came up with? Locket hinges? It wouldn’t have worked anyway, because I don’t need glasses for reading.”

Helena doesn’t say anything for a long moment. Then she turns her head up to Myka, and her expression is somehow the transcendent marriage of a blindingly happy smile and a self-deprecating scowl. “I suppose I’ll just have to love you through the years that pass until you do.”

“Maybe then we can finally make some non-idiotic sacrifices for each other.”

“I would rather avoid sacrifices, certainly any made by you. And yet I also find myself not overly optimistic about the non-idiotic portion of that scenario.”

“I’m going to love you for a long time, you idiot.”

“I’ll love you for a time that’s just as long. And if we’re very lucky, perhaps we’ll even spend some of that long time indoors.”

Myka holds out her hand; Helena takes it. They share yet another very cold kiss. It is their fourth kiss. But these two foolish children have already lost count.

Everywhere they are wisest. They are the magi.

END

**Author's Note:**

> one tag from Tumblr: and with that concludes a thing that seemed like a good idea when it occurred to me,


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